Monday, December 22, 2008

About 3 weeks ago we submitted our I-600A. This is the application filed with the federal government stating our intentions to adopt foreign born orphans, and make them US citizens. One of the things required for approval is fingerprinting.

USCIS (US Customs and Immigration Services) does the approving and fingerprinting. The fun part about that is they tell us when and where to show up, which gets interesting when you travel a lot.

While I didn't exactly show up at the required time, Steve and I both passed our fingerprinting. The cool part about all fingerprinting being electronic is the results are made available while the prints are taken. 5 minutes and that's it.

Anyway, the agent who approves the I-600A was there the day I went, and reviewed our application on the spot. He said we should get our I-171H (the official document from USCIS stating all the specifics of how many children, from what country, etc.) in the next 2 weeks!

Here is why all of this is amazing...the I-171H is kind of the "lynch pin" in the documentation. While there are 25 other documents required to be sent to Russia, the set of documents is not complete until the I-171H is approved, and in our hands. The average time to process this document is 60 days. I was on the website for the Cincinnati USCIS office last week, and the average time to process the I-600A was 60-90 days. As of today, it's been 28 days. 28 DAYS! Praise the Lord!

Monday, December 1, 2008

this came in the mail on Tuesday. this is the official receipt from the submission of our I-600A. it looks no different than the receipt for the Coke i bought at 7Eleven last week, however it is an official government document, as noted by the asterisks at the bottom.